[IV.]
GOURGUES DECLARES HIS PURPOSE TO HIS FOLLOWERS, IN A SPEECH.
His worst dangers of the sea were over. He was now within two hundred leagues of Florida, his prows looking, with unobstructed vision, directly towards the enemies he sought. And now, for the first time, he deemed it proper to unfold to his people the true object of the expedition. He assembled together all his followers:
“Friends and comrades,” he said, “I have hitherto deceived you as to my objects. They were of a sort to require, in the distracted condition of our country, the utmost secrecy. It so happens that France, torn by rival religious factions, is not properly sensible of what is due to her honor and her people. I have chosen you, as persons whom I mostly know, as persons who know me, and have confidence in my courage, my honor, and my judgment. I have chosen you to achieve a great work for the honor of the French name, and for the safety of the French people. Though we quarrel and fight among ourselves at home, yet should it be a common cause, without distinction of party, to protect our people against the foreign enemy, and to avenge the cruelties they have been made to suffer. It is for a purpose of this nature, that I have brought you hither. I have heard many of you speak with tears and rage of the great crime of which the Spaniards, under Melendez, have been guilty, in butchering our unhappy countrymen in Florida; nine hundred widows and orphans have cried in vain for vengeance upon the cruel murderers. You know all this terrible history—you are Frenchmen and brethren of these unfortunate victims. You know the crime of our enemies, the Spaniards; always our enemies, and never more so than when they profess peace to us, and speak with smiles. What should be our crime, if we suffer them to escape just punishment for their butchery; if, with the means of vengeance in our hands, and our enemies before us, we longer delay the hour of retribution? We must avenge the murder of our countrymen; we must make the Spaniards of Florida atone, in blood, for the shame and affront which they have put upon the lilies of France! If you feel as I do, the day of vengeance and just judgment is at hand. That I am resolute in this object—that it fills my whole soul with but one feeling—my whole mind with but one thought—you may know, when you see that I have sold all my worldly
goods, all the possessions that I have on earth, in order to obtain the means for the destruction of these Spaniards of Florida. I take for granted that you feel with me, that you are as jealous of the honor of your country as myself, and that you are prepared for any sacrifice—life itself—in this cause, at once so glorious, and so necessary to the fame and safety of our people. If our Frenchmen are to be butchered without a cause, and find no avenger, there is an end of the French name, and honor, and well-being; they will find no refuge on the face of the earth. Speak, then, my comrades. Let me hear that you feel and think and will resolve with me. I ask you to do nothing, and to peril nothing, beyond myself. I have already staked all my worldly fortunes on this one object. I now offer to march at your head, to give you the first example of self-sacrifice. Is there one of you who will refuse to follow?”
A speech so utterly unexpected, at first took his followers by surprise; but the appeal was too grateful to their real sympathies, their commander too much beloved, and the infusion of genuine Gascons too large among the adventurers, to make them hesitate in their decision. They felt the justice of the appeal; were warmed to indignation by the sense of injury and discredit cast upon the honor and the arms of France; and, soon recovering from their astonishment, they eagerly pledged themselves to follow wherever he should lead. With cries of enthusiasm they declared themselves ready for the work of vengeance; and, taking them in the humor which he had inspired, De Gourgues suffered not a moment’s unnecessary delay to interfere with his progress. Crowding all sail upon his vessels, he rapidly crossed the straits of Bahama, and stretched, with easy course, along the low shores of the Floridian.
[V.]
GOURGUES WELCOMED BY THE FLORIDIANS.
It was not very long before his vessels drew in sight of one of the Forts of the Spaniards, situated at the entrance of May River. So little did they apprehend the approach of any French armament, that they saluted that of De Gourgues, as if they had been ships of their own nation, mistaking them as such. Our chevalier encouraged their mistake. He answered their salute, gun for gun; but he passed onward without any intercourse, and the night following entered the river, called by the Indians Tacatacourou, but to which the French had given the name of the Seine, some fifteen leagues distant.
Here, confounding the strangers with the Spaniards, a formidable host of Indians were prepared to give them battle. The red-men had by this time fully experienced the tender mercies of their brutal and bigoted neighbors; and had learned to contrast them unfavorably with what they remembered of the Frenchmen under Ribault and Laudonniere. With all the faults of the latter, they knew him really as a gentle and moderate commander; by no means blood-thirsty, and doing nothing in mere lust of power, wantonly, and with a spirit of malicious provocation only. There were also other influences at work among them, by which to impress them favorably towards the French, and make them bitterly hostile to the usurpers by whom they had been destroyed. It needed, therefore, only that Gourgues should make himself known to the natives, to discover their hostility. He employed for this purpose his trumpeter, who had served under Laudonniere, and was well known to the king, Satouriova, whose province lay along the waters of the Tacatacourou, and with whose tribe it was the good fortune of our Frenchmen to encounter. Satouriova, knew the trumpeter at once, and received him graciously. He soon revealed the existing relations between the red-men and the Spaniards, and was delighted when assured that the Frenchmen had come to renew and brighten the ancient chain of friendship which had bound the red-men in amity with the people of La Caroline. The interview was full of compliment and good feeling on both sides. The next day was designated for a grand conference between Satouriova and Gourgues. The interview opened with a wild and picturesque display, which, on the part of the Indians, loses nothing of its dignity because of its rudeness. The stem and simple manners of the red-men, their deliberation, their forbearance, the calm which overspreads their assemblies, the stately solemnity with which the orator rises to address them, their patient attention; these are ordinary characteristics, which make the spectator forgetful of their poverty, their rude condition, the inferiority of their weapons, and the ridiculous simplicity of their ornaments. Satouriova anticipated the objects of Gourgues. Before the latter could detail his designs, the savage declared his deadly hatred of the Spaniards. He was already assembling his people for their destruction. They should have no foothold on his territories!
All this was spoken with great vivacity; and he proceeded to give a long history of the wrongs done to his people by the usurpers. He recurred, then, to the terrible destruction of the Frenchmen at La Caroline, and at the Bay of Matanzas; and voluntarily pledged himself, with all his powers, to aid Gourgues in the contemplated work of vengeance.
The response of our chevalier was easy. He accepted the pledges of Satouriova with delight. He had not come, he said, with any present design to assail the Spaniards, but rather with the view to renew the ancient alliance of the Frenchmen with the Floridians; and, should he find them in the proper temper to rise against the usurpers, then, to bring with him an armament sufficiently powerful to rid the country of the intruders. But, as he found Satouriova in such excellent spirit, and filled with so brave a resolution, he was determined, even with the small force at his command, to second the chief in his desires to rid himself of his bad neighbors.